- From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>
- Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 05:22:33 -0400
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
Hello, One of the characteristics of the W3C that I have long admired was that its recommendations were freely available to anyone to download and use. As the W3C itself has noted, the RAND proposal is a substantial departure from that practice. This is very much a step in the wrong direction and I think that can be illustrated by the history of standards work over the past 20 years. Compare the practices of the ISO, which does have a RAND mechanism, but has long made access to its standards a matter of some difficulty and cost. One of the reasons why standards, such as SGML, enjoyed so little in the way of open source development was the difficulty in obtaining copies of the standards. While a majority of us who read/use the W3C recommendations probably don't produce implementations, there is a large number of people who do collaborate on such projects. The impact of any RAND like mechanism on such projects would adversely impact the continuation and productivity of such projects. In the very short term, the major owners of IP in W3C standards might make more profits, but would lose the technical input from the large body of contributors who work on open source projects. The long term impact would be very adverse in terms of drying up a pool of talent that such owners have for free under the current system. It is true that freeware versions of products will appear based upon contributed IP but consider that GM or GE is not going to use freeware product for their publishing department either due to a lack of features or the need for technical support from a major vendor. Not to pick on SVG, but Adobe, Kodak and others stand to gain more from demonstrations and experiencs that users at potential customers gain from open source projects than any possible revenue loss. The RAND model was obviously proposed by short-sighted bean counters who have no real understanding of how open standards contribute to the building of a technological infrastructure. If the W3C wants to shuffle off-stage after a short and very illustrious career in standards development, that will be a sad day and one brought all the sooner by the RAND proposal. Sincerely, Patrick -- Patrick Durusau Director of Research and Development Society of Biblical Literature pdurusau@emory.edu
Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 05:15:18 UTC